THIS
RECORDING IS A TOTAL EXPERIENCE. It exposes your child to
controlled body movement, provides a stimulus for imagination and
creativity, and presents a range of though, music and sound from
things medieval through today's electronics. NOTHING LIKE IT HAS
EXISTED BEFORE!

The above is pretty much correct. While album liner notes are
often full of boasting or unfounded statements, Bruce and Esther
were doing something special, and they knew it. Here's my
overview of their recordings (hint for the impatient: the part
about the weirder records is further down
the page).

The first three Dance Sing and Listen records
run the gamut of topics and styles. The self-explanatory
"Clap your hands" and the square-dancing piece
"Children's Hoe-down" have the listener doing basic
physical activities, but then there are more imaginative pieces
like "Shadows", where the listener is instructed to
pretend that he is his own shadow, winding and curling around
trees and getting larger as the sun sets, or "Clocks",
where the listener pretends to be a cuckoo clock, a grandfather
clock and an "invisible clock" (?). There are also
regular stories where activity isn't expected, such as "Coco
the Coconut", about a coconut looking for a tree to live in,
or "Fireworks", about life in ancient China. There are
silly songs too: try to imagine what "Eine Kleine
Gebouncemusik" sounds like, or ponder the chorus "No
matter where I am-burger/There's nothing like a hamburger"
from "The Hamburger Song". There are songs based on
medieval music, and also songs with excerpts of classical music,
both with spoken introductions giving a brief music history
lesson, or definitions of musical terms.

If you are familiar with the work of Perrey and Kingsley,
you'll have a good idea of what to expect from Bruce's music.
It's very uptempo, full of unusual sound effects, blips, sudden
stops and other playful elements. I have never found reference to
Bruce using an actual Moog on these records (although he did use
one on The Electric Lucifer),
but a lot of the sounds seem like they could have been made with
a Moog. These records never have the dreaded Casio or Yamaha DX7
sounds that one often finds on electronic children's records; in
fact, Bruce's music is generally much more sophisticated than you
would think would be possible from using electronic instruments
and computers in 1963.

All three Dance Sing and Listen records were
released in 1963 and are imaginative and unique, but not quite
FAR OUT. Their 1968 release, The Way Out Record for
Children (perhaps a reference to Perrey and Kingsley's
groundbreaking The In Sound From Way Out?) has
that peculiar liner note
that refers to "reverse psychedelics" and being
"turned on", but the record itself is stylistically
similar to the previous three. However, the next record, The
Electronic Record for Children (1969) and 1972's Dance
to the Music are so far out there that it is tempting to
attribute the differences between them and the previous records
to pharmaceutical experimentation on the part of their creators.
I have no idea whether this is actually the case; Bruce and
Esther could have very well been straight-edge and never touched
anything mind-expanding. However, these two records advocate the
same kind of inner-awareness and cosmic exploration that are
typically associated with LSD trips in the popular imagination.
Whatever the case is, these two records are really wonderful, and
really bizarre.

Of all the Dimension 5 releases, The
Electronic Record for Children has the most psychedelic cover,
featuring a naked man and woman surrounded by 7 naked children,
with a large sphere (perhaps it represents "Spaceship
Earth") behind them with the title of the record on it.
Orbiting the sphere are two children in spacesuits, and two
children naked except for space helmets and backpacks. The cover
was drawn by Chris Kachulis, who also sings on some of the record
and has a wonderfully sedate and almost spooky voice (I wish he
was on other records; his songs are really cool). You know this
record is going to be different when you hear the spoken
introduction on side 1:

Bruce: Well,
Miss Nelson, do you dig being a traveler in space?
Miss Nelson: Groovy, Bruce! From here we can see everything.
Look, over there is a meteor shower! And isn't that somebody
standing on a small asteroid?
Bruce: Yeah, it's Chris, and he's rapping with some children.
Let's listen....

The record has some of my favorite songs on it, including
"Dance" (a Russian-inspired dance piece with sped-up
Chipmunk voices), "Listen", a Chris song that starts
with spooky overlaid whispers and has great stereo separation
effects, "Saint Basil", where we visit the Planet of
Singing Mice (?) and hear a Greek children's chorus singing to
this Doors-like organ piece, and "Upside Down", a
poignant and somewhat somber pop song about childhood. Throughout
the record, there are little echoes, reverbs and background
noises that seem designed to reward the careful (or entranced)
listener with a more mind-expanding experience.

The only problem with this record is that the cassette version
of it that is available now has some huge differences in song
choices from the LP version, which (in my opinion) makes for a
lesser record. However, the other really wild record, 1972's Dance
to the Music is the same on its cassette release, and
well worth ordering.

Dance to the Music is my favorite of all the
Dimension 5 records, maybe because it's the first one I heard, or
maybe because of the amazing songs on it. Although
there are a few LPs from this time period I haven't yet heard
(and they could be even better than this one), to me, this is
Bruce and Esther at their peak. "When the music's over"
(no relation to the Doors song) is their version of Musical
Chairs, instructing the listener to do some activity when the
frenetic music stops. There's a great instrumental part at the
end with various giggles and laughs and yeehaws when the music
stops. You cannot help but smile when you hear this song.
"Squarefinger" is a square dance for your hands, with
perky music and bubble machine sound effects. "EIO" is
a cover of sorts; the chorus is "Old MacDonald had a form",
introduced by the statement that "your form results from the
way your genetic programming programs you"."Soul
Transportation" is quite simply, Bruce and Esther taking you
on a guide through your inner space. If you were going to make a
record instructing someone in the art of taking a trip without
psychedelics, and what they might expect to see along the way,
this is pretty close to what you'd come up with. I've listened to
this song several dozen times and it still astounds me. This song
alone makes this record worth your time.

I have now (October 1998) acquired a copy of Together
(1971), which is not quite as psychedelic as Dance
to the Music or The Electronic Record for
Children; nor is it really as oriented towards
activities and storytelling as the three Dance Sing and
Listen records.What it is is a fine pop record, with a
lot of moments that seem like they were originally written for a
"rock" record. Assuming that it was recorded after
Bruce's 1970 solo album Electric Lucifer (which
I don't know, I'm just guessing from the date sequence), that
would make some sense. For some reason, Bruce released this LP
(and no others) under the name "Jackpine Savage".

Esther's vocal participation on this one is limited: a few
introductions where she instructs the listener "when the
music stops, be the sound you hear" (on
"Abracadabra") or to "take out crayons and paper
and draw what you hear" (on "Colors") and big
parts on "O.K Robot" and "Touch". On
"O.K Robot", she and Bruce give a robot commands, and
it responds with nifty sound effects, with the song finally
segueing into a square-dance number.

"Touch" is my favorite song on this record, not only
for the lyrics, but for the great driving dance beat which is
just waiting to be sampled and looped by some
"electronica" musician for a dance track.
"Touch" is the only traditional children's activity
song on this LP,with touching activities in both the spoken
introduction and the chorus.There's a great part In the middle of
the song where Esther says "Sit on the floor, cross your
legs, put your hands on your knees, close your eyes and Do Not
Think" (keep in mind that one of Esther's biographical
sketches reveals that one of her hobbies is yoga) and then the
music stops. There's 18 seconds of absolute silence before the
sound resumes with the command "Now start thinking, get up,
and touch things while you dance".

Science fiction themes and pop culture references pop up more
on this record than any of the others I've heard. "Rain of
Earth" has an introduction which tells of "Children who
'set their controls for the heart of the sun'", referring to
Pink Floyd's song of the same name on 1968's "Saucerful of
Secrets"."Colors" includes a lyric about "the
King who was Crimson", (like the band, I'm assuming) and
"O.K Robot" has the line "Send our regards to HAL
9000" (remember, 2001 was released only 3 years before in
1968).

This record is missing two usual elements: first, there are
very few children's voices on this LP. During
"Intermission" a young girl shies away from saying much
into a microphone, and "Outermission" was composed by
one of the children who appear on other records, but it has no
vocals or lyrics. Also, there is no classical interlude from
Praxiteles Pandel, although he is credited as being a musical
consultant for this LP. Although this LP isn't available on
cassette, it's worth hearing if you can track down a copy.

The only record I have heard besides the 7
discussed above is 1976's Ebenezer Electric.
This is a basic retelling of Charles Dickens' A Christmas
Carol, except for at least two instances when it turns
into a children's activity record, with instructions from Esther.
Although it's on Dimension 5, this one is more Bruce's project
than Esther's; the credits are for Bruce and Ted (aka Praxiteles)
Pandel, with Esther being more of a "featured player".
This record is good, and it does include a nice booklet in case
your theater group should want to stage it, but somehow it just
doesn't achieve the imagination of the other records (maybe
because of the basic restrictions of the source material?).
Although it is really good for a Christmas record, so that may be
enough.

Bruce's last record was 1981's
"Bite", which I have never heard, but is listed in an
"International Discography of the New Wave" that I
found in the library. The only description of it says that
49-year old Bruce played synthesizers on it and teamed up with a
13-year old vocalist named Ed Harvey. I have heard that it's an
"angry" record, which may explain why it's listed in a
punk discography and why no libraries in the US seem to have it
even though Bruce's other works are fairly well represented.

Bruce Haack died in 1988 from heart failure, having had a
history of previous heart problems. I am still attempting to
locate an official obituary, which I will post when I find.

Esther Nelson continued the Dimension 5 label, and in 1986,
started a series of cassettes
featuring nonsense and camp songs for children, with Praxiteles
Pandel doing the music. These feature a lot of the material in Esther's books of songs for children.
I'm not going to say much about these cassettes or Esther's books
because neither are where my primary interest lies. Suffice to
say these songbook cassettes are not as interesting as the
earlier stuff, mainly because they're just covers of old nonsense
classics like "On Top of Spaghetti" and "Great
Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts"; they aren't bad,
but they aren't thought-provoking or unusual; they're just wacky.
Esther's books are primarily for teachers, librarians and parents
and feature either songs for children, or songs and movement
activities for children. It's been a while since I've looked
through them, but I remember that her books from the 1970's have
some of the activities and stories from the early records in
them. They are an excellent resource for people who work with
children, but I don't really have anything else to say about
them.